


standing on stone

by theseerasures



Category: Frozen (Disney Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-09
Updated: 2020-02-11
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:08:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22669048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theseerasures/pseuds/theseerasures
Summary: "Okay, here’s the deal," Kristoff says, once they’re in the courtyard. "You’re going to pick out your favorite apple from the trees, and then you’re going to climb the tree and get it."Post-Thaw: Kristoff teaches Elsa how to climb a tree and neither of them talk about feelings.
Relationships: Elsa & Kristoff (Disney)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 37





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For Rachel, who prompted "scars, apples, sunshine."
> 
> Now with author's commentary in second chapter! Please view as Entire Work to get endnotes to work.

[1]"Oh."

Kristoff jerks his head up; next to him, Anna mutters in her sleep and turns over. “Elsa! I mean. Hi.”

Elsa smiles in response, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “Hi. What are you two doing here?”

"Huh? Oh." He glances around at the great hall before replying. "Anna wanted to catch a star shower, but, uh…she fell asleep."

"Of course she did."

"Yeah, well…" Kristoff grins, but feels it fade as he looks at Elsa again.

They all have good days and bad days; he _knows_ that Anna has nightmares, and sometimes he wakes up clinging to a pillow for dear life because in his dream Anna’d turned cold and heavy in his arms before falling away.

Kristoff doesn’t know if Elsa dreams, but sometimes he catches her staring at her hands for too long. Sometimes he sees her looking at random things in the castle like she doesn’t recognize them at all,[2] and sometimes—like right now—she just looks like…

Like she can just fade into the walls. A ghost.[3]

"Right," Elsa says, breaking into his thoughts, "I’ll leave you two to. Um."

Kristoff watches as she turns around. It’s usually Anna who cheers Elsa up, but Anna’s sleeping.

"Wait, hey."

He’s sweating already; how does Anna _do_ this?

"Sit with us? We can watch the sunrise."

Cool. He’ll be cool.

Elsa hesitates, but sits down, and Kristoff instantly regrets everything—he doesn’t _dislike_ Elsa, okay, it’s just that she’s the queen and before they’ve always had Anna as a buffer and any moment now he’s going to bring up the ice thing, it’s not his fault, ice is his life—[4]

"So…your ice magic."

Elsa raises an eyebrow.

He hates himself, definitely, but now the words are out of his mouth. “How does it work? I mean. Where does all the ice come from? Does it come from—from the air? How does that ice dress work? I mean, not that I want—does it affect you? Your ice? Would it hurt if—”

"My magic doesn’t hurt me," Elsa interrupts, the ghost of a smirk on her face.[5]

"Right," Kristoff says, hurriedly. He’s just—he’s going to stop, they’re going to sit in silence.

"So if—if you accidentally froze your hand—"

"My hand would be fine."

Kristoff stares; something about Elsa’s expression and the sure way she says it makes him think that she might have…he doesn’t know.[6]

"No," Elsa continues, staring out the window, "the only visible damage my magic has done has always been on…"

She trails off, and then swallows, hard. “I don’t have a single scar on me.”[7]

Kristoff thinks of Anna and her single streak of white hair, of how she used to play with it when she was nervous—does she miss it? It’d been a part of her for so long.

Thinking about Anna with white hair makes his stomach clench, though, so he plows on ahead. “You never got injured at all? Even as a kid? You must have—fallen off of things or horses or trees—”

Elsa shakes her head. “Even before I—left, I didn’t go outside much, and after…my room was—safe. It was safe.[8] There might have been some bruises, but I don’t—” she makes a self-deprecating sound, “I don’t think I’ve ever even climbed a tree.”

He frowns as Elsa slowly curls in on herself, like she can’t get warm; that doesn’t make any sense, the cold doesn’t bother Elsa, she just said so, but…

Kristoff wonders, sometimes.[9]

He looks at Anna, snoring nearby. It’s weird; he remembers how easily she’d decided to just climb the entire North Mountain to see Elsa, and how easily she’d just—thrown herself off, with only a _catch!_

He glances back at Elsa, whose arms are still tightly wrapped around her torso like she’s afraid of falling—[10]

"Let’s go fix that."

Wait, what?

Elsa stares at him as he throws caution to the wind and— _what is wrong with him_ , this is all Anna’s fault—grabs her hand, pulling her toward the doors of the castle. “Come on. Come on!”

For a second, she pulls back, something incomprehensible flashing across her eyes—then she laughs, softly, and follows.

* * *

"Okay, here’s the deal," Kristoff says, once they’re in the courtyard. "You’re going to pick out your favorite apple from the trees, and then you’re going to climb the tree and get it."

Elsa looks at him, somehow even smaller now that they’re outside. “They’re all—it’s still summer. These apples won’t be ripe for months.”

For some reason, the way she says that makes Kristoff’s chest hurt, but he pushes it aside. “So? I didn’t say pick the best apple. I said pick your _favorite_.”[11]

She’s still staring at him like he’s pushed her world off its axis. “I—”

Kristoff thinks of Anna, and what she’d do. ”C’mon,” he prods, again, “Pick your favorite apple.”

He watches as Elsa finally tears her gaze away from him and toward the trees, watches as the stiff line in her shoulders relaxes, watches as she breathes, and just lets herself _be_.

He watches as she lifts a hand, and—okay, he knows magic, he’s lived with trolls, but this is _ice_ —sends a large snowflake to the top of one of the trees.

"That one," Elsa says, and her eyes are alive.[12]

* * *

"I look ridiculous."

Kristoff grins. He’s never seen Elsa like this—there’s nothing royal about her when she’s hoisting herself carefully up an apple tree, she just looks…young. It reminds him of how sometimes sunshine hits an ice block in _just_ the right way and causes a burst of color.[13]

(It reminds him of Anna, too, but well—what doesn’t these days?)

Aloud, he says, “I wouldn’t put my foot there unless you want a broken neck. Go for the one on your left.”

She huffs, and grabs the one he points to instead. “Please tell me that I’m getting close.”

Kristoff looks at the snowflake floating ten feet above where she is. “You could have picked an apple that was closer to the ground,” he replies, before noticing abruptly that the branch that Elsa’s standing on is—

"Don’t put your foot there!"

* * *

(“This is going to scar, Your Majesty,” the Court Physicians says as he looks at Elsa’s arm at breakfast, but Elsa waves him away, mouth twisting upward as she meets Kristoff’s gaze.

Kristoff smiles back.)


	2. Endnotes

1Title taken from "Heart of a Girl," by the Killers. I still have a lot of fondness for this fic, because it reckons with an overarching idea that even now I'm very much enamored with as both a writer and a person—the idea that you have to _keep_ earning your happy ending, even after the credits play. All the stuff I wrote before this fic for this fandom had been about elaborating on certain affects already present in the first movie: feelings of loss, guilt, love, and so on, but this fic was meant to take Kristoff and Elsa further as people, _beyond_ what canon could show us, while still using the elements that make them who they are from the movie. It's one of the unique joys I take from writing fanfiction—using canon provides to build something that's new, but still makes complete sense at a blueprint level.[return to text]

2It's been six years and the question of "how much time did Elsa ACTUALLY spend shut up in her room" is still up in the air, but there is one thing that I'm 100% certain of, which is that the first few months post-Thaw must have been some special kind of sensory hell for her. Even putting aside the fact that she (and Anna) were horribly under-stimulated in general, think of all the textures she's never felt, or hasn't felt for almost fifteen years! Let's be real, she probably burst into the tears the first time someone handed her a fork. There's also the issue of, like: Arendelle itself is more than a decade behind the rest of the world due to the gates being closed, and then Elsa herself is even FURTHER behind, temporally speaking, because she was shut up from the rest of the castle. Changes upon changes she never knew about.[return to text]

3So there's the obvious "madwoman in the attic" connotation here (which is pretty much what Elsa WAS to the general populace for 13 years), but "Elsa feels like a ghost" is also meant to link up with the later "Elsa has no scars." No scars means no wounds means no healing. It means no change—no death, and therefore no life. Elsa stayed exactly the same; she was the specter tying everyone back to the past even as they tried to move on.[return to text]

4I think when I wrote this I pictured it being...a month since the Thaw, tops—basically, the period of time when Kristoff and Elsa could hang out without feeling awkward and might even exchange secret wry grins at each other—but ONLY when Anna is also there. By themselves they're just both too comfortable with silence and too busy with their own hangups to boot: Kristoff is OVERWHELMING self-conscious, especially about the royal stuff, Elsa...doesn't know how to talk to anyone, ever (and never will). For this conversation to happen at all, Anna had to BE there, even if she doesn't say anything, because her physical presence is a good reminder for them to get out of their own heads and make an effort. Still, Kristoff is doing most of the work here for two reasons: 1), I think he's felt a weird sense of responsibility for Elsa since at least the moment of the sword sacrifice, because Anna made it very clear that Elsa was the most important thing in the world, and Kristoff believes in Anna, and 2) he's fascinated by Elsa's magic. The second one is crucial, even though he's like, embarrassed by his hobbies and having feelings in general, because it means that he's interested in Elsa FOR Elsa. If that weren't true they'd just spend the night talking about how awesome Anna is, which, while always a worthwhile endeavor, wouldn't get them as far. They have to talk about themselves eventually to become _real_ friends, as opposed to the friends-by-proxy thing they currently have.[return to text]

5Well, this micro-expression has certainly aged...some kinda way in the advent of the sequel. Elsa's real superpower is somehow being able to have the best AND worst opinion of herself at the same time: "I'm so powerful my very powerful magic can't kill me, and I know because I tried! Not to brag!!"[return to text]

6I still remember fiddling with the exact wording of this line when I first wrote it and not being satisfied with the finished product. In at least one draft I had Kristoff paint his suspicion that Elsa might have attempted self-harm in the starkest way possible, but it felt...TOO bleak, and also not something that Kristoff would be able to articulate, in that moment. He hasn't known Elsa for very long at all, and being Queen and being a powerful ice sorceress creates a very solid double aura. I don't think he's ready to be responsible for that level of heaviness yet, not when he's already kind of made himself responsible for Anna's mental wellbeing. I do think the line as-is goes a little TOO far in the obfuscation, though—were I writing it now, I'd let the moment breathe a little more.[return to text]

7Another moment that I could have made more explicit. Why didn't I just have Elsa stare at where Anna's white streak used to be when she was obviously thinking it? And just have Kristoff follow her unspoken train of thought? Who knows. Anyway, Elsa is obviously full of lies—she has plenty of scars, even if no one can see them. She just doesn't think she DESERVES to hurt, not when she's been doing all the hurting.[return to text]

8I remember fiddling a lot with the syntax here, too, but it turned out pretty well. "Left" and "safe" are both laden with implication—what/who did Elsa leave after the Accident, when she never physically left at all? Who was her room safe for? For her? For everyone else?[return to text]

9Yet another moment where I hemmed and hawed over what to say and what to just imply and ended up swinging too far toward the implication side of things. I didn't want Kristoff to stroke his chin and say "ah yes, just because Elsa doesn't get cold doesn't mean she CAN get warm, I am aware of this nuance and am connecting it to the earlier discussion about her ghostliness and her lack of physical scars as we speak," but also just having him WONDER is too, too vague.[return to text]

10...Yeah. I have no idea what's going on here but I'm pretty sure I don't like it. I took a lot of writerly shortcuts at the close of this section and ended up throwing a lot of motifs at the wall to see what sticks. So in the span of a few lines you have: Elsa can't get cold but also can't get warm, and Elsa's afraid to fall because...why? Because what if she doesn't and ends up confirming her ghostliness once and for all? Maybe, but I honestly can't remember. It feels like it would make more sense for Kristoff to think about how the fall motif applies to HIMSELF, because he's the one going out on a limb here, and having to trust that Elsa will go along with his harebrained scheme to make her more socially adjusted.[return to text]

11If I recall correctly, this was the line that jumped into my head which kickstarted with this whole fic, and now I wish that I had stuck with this idea and JUST that. "Kristoff teaches Elsa to be spontaneous and arbitrary" is a ~1k fic; Kristoff discovering that when he's not constantly watching out for Anna's safety he's actually pretty good at being impulsive, the two of them both rediscovering a piece of their lost childhoods—that's all good stuff. "Kristoff proves to Elsa that she's a real girl after all" was just too big of an idea. If you want to be generous about it you might be able to interpret it as "Kristoff's a little overwhelmed by all of the scattershot existential vibes Elsa's giving off and just decides to do this one small thing," but the amount of effort I spent on inspecting every thematic fleck about Elsa from the movie just feels like wasted effort.[return to text]

12I know this is probably because I now have three years of graduate school under my belt so my relationship with sentences-that-endlessly-disgorge-subclauses is akin to Stockholm syndrome, but this really is my least favorite way to animate characters in fiction. Alive with what? Mischief? Terror? Fiscal responsibility? MAYBE if Elsa feeling like a ghost had been developed more earlier in the story this would have worked, but as it stands it's just a lazy shortcut that ends up sounding vague and pretentious, which is the worst way to be pretentious.[return to text]

13Let's have an "O" for "O, this is a slightly tortured metaphor" and "O, I forgot to incorporate this word from the prompt and the fic is almost over." Thinking about sunshine on ice is fine for Elsa, but in what universe would immediately-post-Thaw Kristoff think about ice in conjunction with Anna and be remotely okay?[return to text]


End file.
